San Francisco, Oakland move up national list of bicycle commuting cities

A cyclist on Market Street in San Francisco, now ranked 4th in the nation for bicycle commuting.

Despite a four-year bicycle injunction starting in 2006, San Francisco’s share of bicycle commuting has risen, lifting the city to 4th on the League of American Bicyclists’ (LAB) list of 70 largest American cities, while Oakland rose two spaces to 5th. The list is compiled each year from data collected by the Census Bureau as part of its American Community Survey (ACS).

“I’m proud that San Francisco continues to be a leader in promoting bicycling as a healthy, sustainable transportation alternative,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “With the safer and more inviting bike network we’re creating throughout the City, more and more San Franciscans will start bicycling.”

San Francisco’s 10 percent increase and Oakland’s 18 percent increase in bicycle commuting in 2009 came during a year when the number one and number two bicycle-commuting cities in the country, Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, respectively, lost bicycle mode share relative to other forms of transportation. Despite these drops, Portland and Minneapolis are still far ahead of the Bay Area, with 5.81 percent of Portlanders bicycle commuting and 3.86 percent in the Twin Cities. Compare that to San Francisco’s 2.98 percent and Oakland’s 2.53 percent.

These numbers should seem low to those who ride regularly on Market Street in San Francisco during commute hours, where cyclists have been the majority of the street’s users the past several Bike to Work Days. Overall bicycle usage in cities is actually harder to measure than the very specific commuting percentages would suggest, because ACS data collection under-counts cyclists, according to LAB. From their website: